


Placebo

by Phiso



Series: Dynamic [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: saved from LJ
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-27
Updated: 2010-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-27 03:56:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10801188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phiso/pseuds/Phiso
Summary: "Sirius was an adult now. He was an adult, and he had to handle things in adult ways."





	Placebo

 

**When:** November 1976  
 

Sirius was an adult now.

He was an adult, and he had to handle things in adult ways.

He couldn’t throw tantrums, he couldn’t stomp his foot and toss his hair, he couldn’t pout.

Sirius was an adult, and he had to handle things in adult ways. And adults didn’t get behave like that when things went wrong.

No, he mused as he stared at the stars from the hard stone beneath him, he couldn’t do that anymore. It wouldn’t work nearly as effectively as it would have when he was eleven. When he was eleven he liked to pretend he was an adult but knew he wasn’t; when he was eleven he liked to take the best of both worlds and fuse them into one terrible being that let him get (almost) anything he wanted. But he wasn’t eleven anymore, and so that was no longer a choice.

So what do adults do when they’re upset? Sirius asked himself, shifting his position to allow his hands to act as his pillow behind his head. Well, what did his parents do when they were upset? It was true that they weren’t the best of examples, but they were the first he had been exposed to; his blood always went back, even if his heart didn’t want to.

His mother threw tantrums. But she was a woman, and a horrible woman at that, one who threw as many kinds of tantrums as there were stars in the sky. She would shriek sometimes, screeching evil words that cut like knives and hurt more than any blow ever could; other times she was silent, boring into your eyes with her own in a way that made your knees shake in terror as your mind imagined all the foul things she didn’t dare speak, because if she was harsh with the words she spoke, it would be a nightmare to dream up the words she refused to utter.

His father drank. That was his drug of choice, expensive alcohol of all kinds; European was favoured, of course, but sometimes he felt exotic and went out of his way to taste a particularly exquisite bottle of sake or rum or vodka. That was his way of handling things that went wrong if he didn’t want to face them, and drank until his problems no longer seemed much like problems. If he couldn’t drink them away, however, his father would strike like an angry bear, all fury and crushing blows and sharp talons. Sometimes he liked to mix both, but usually he just stuck to drinking. He didn’t like to soil his hands.

And then sometimes his parents just would just ignore the problem entirely, the problem for so many years being Sirius himself. That one was the most effective, and hurt the most, despite everything. Sometimes when they ignored him Sirius wondered if he was actually dead; had he snapped his neck without noticing and was wandering around as a ghost? But wouldn’t they see him? Things didn’t work that way, right?

But no, he wouldn’t be dead, and instead he would simply be ignored. And it’s amazing how absolutely useless, pathetic, worthless a person can feel when they are ignored. It’s more effective than telling them they are trash, than shredding them with sharp glass words or pelting them with books large enough to kill small animals. They would relieve themselves of their anger by feeding his self-loathing; that was their way of handling things, and thus how they managed to deal with their renegade son for so long.

Sirius lay without blinking for a long time, his eyes watering as the starts burned brighter and brighter as the tears blurred them all together, his brain screaming to just let them close but somehow simultaneously relishing the itchy burning encompassing him. Finally, he closed his eyes, a strange relief flooding him, and he wondered how he would choose to deal with things.

What, pray tell, would be his placebo of choice? And how long would it keep him at bay?

Because Sirius was an adult now. And adults didn’t scream until someone else fixed things. No, adults would simply avoid the problem all together and hope it resolved itself. And in the meantime, they would distract themselves with petty loves, swallowing capsules full of nothing but their bodies and minds fooling themselves into thinking that they had just tasted the miracle of heaven itself.


End file.
